1. Field of the Invention
The instant disclosure relates to a plug-and-play wireless network extension station and an automatic configuration method, more particularly, to the wireless network extension station capable of automatically network exploring and configuring.
2. Description of Related Art
One usual way to expand the coverage of a Wi-Fi network is to configure an Ethernet network for linking multiple wireless stations. The linking among the stations may provide broader network service since a larger coverage is covered.
According to the conventional technology, in order to establish a wireless area network covering a specific range, multiple wireless network stations are required and multiple related settings need to be configured. The configuration may include the setting related to the wired network such as ADSL, and the setting related to the wireless network such as the parameters of SSID, signal channel, network gateway, and security password. The wireless network configuration related to the station A is required to be configured as the device with wireless network connection receives the wireless signals from the nearby wireless network station A.
In order to expand the coverage of the wireless signals or increase number of connection channels, the number of wireless network stations over the Ethernet network is also increased. In the meanwhile, all the wireless network stations over the same network need the same wireless network configurations. For example, it is required to enter a setting page for each station for connection configuration, in which the wireless network configuration needs to be duplicated for the all stations. Therefore, the interconnected wireless network stations may cover a broader signaling range. More, a gateway may be adopted to link two or more network domains.
However, the mentioned configuration for each station needs to be modified entirely or constantly duplicated when the coverage of network expands, or any change occurs. The disadvantages of the conventional technology are summed up as follows:
The network administrator needs to implement the tangible routing of Ethernet network among the wireless network stations;
The network administrator needs to perform the same wireless network configuration and security parameters to the each wireless station manually;
It is easy to make mistake as manually performing the wireless network configuration and network security parameters;
The parameters of configuration are required to be modified manually when the wireless network configuration is changed;
The network administrator has no effective way to monitor the operational statuses of all the wireless stations.
Moreover, an aspect of known power-line network may be introduced to be data transmission channel among the wireless stations for reducing the cost resulting in Ethernet network construction. The power-line communication technology (PLC) may be used to expand the network coverage by installing a power-line network bridge in the network. The data may be carried over the power-source loop for transmission. Therefore the network devices may be communicated to each other over the power-line network.
The conventional method may still manually perform configuration to the wireless network stations over the power-line network for having the same wireless network configuration.
However, this conventional method may have drawbacks such as:
1. The network administrator must manually set the same wireless network configuration and security parameters to every wireless network station;
2. Manually setting the wireless network configuration and security parameters may easily bring mistakes;
3. The configuration for each station requires manual modification as the wireless network configuration changes;
4. The network administrator has no way to monitor the operational statuses of all the stations.